BASIC INSTINCT (1992; director: Paul Verhoeven)
This early 90s meisterwerk is so dedicated to being trashy, sleazy, steamy and light on the logic that it’s real easy to love if you have a taste for the tasteless. It’s slick in that Paul Verhoeven way, which means that there’s a faint smirk underneath the perfect Hollywood lighting and the troubled cop/femme fatale cliches. Everything is over the top. Verhoeven lays on the close-ups and the opulent San Francisco views. The Joe Eszterhas script is hard-boiled to the max, all snap and innuendo, with scarcely two lines of dialogue in a row that sound like anything that an actual human would say. Meanwhile, Jerry Goldsmith’s booming orchestral score lays countless exclamation points all over this cinematic purple prose.
You’ll know in the first twenty minutes if you enjoy this movie or if you think that the original film negative ought to be fed to rats. I’ll lay it out for you.
It opens with a sex scene. A rich man’s bedroom. Mattress springs getting a workout. She rides cowgirl on top; he’s underneath with hands tied to the bed frame. Kinky, kinky. Verhoeven hides her identity, but gives us three shots of her bare ass thrusting before she pulls out an ice-pick and stabs the guy in the face like she’s making taco meat (good Rob Bottin splatter effects here).
Cut to the next scene: The police are on the case. They search the house and deliver exposition in between wisecracks over the ravaged corpse. Detective Michael Douglas strolls in late with perfect hair and a $9,000 suit and, despite there being roughly 358 other cops around, he and his partner are somehow the FIRST ones to notice the cocaine on the night table, sitting out in plain view like it’s a bookmarked Mary Higgins Clark hardcover.
Next: Michael Douglas goes to question the dead man’s girlfriend, Catherine Tramell, at her impressive Scarface-worthy home. She’s not there, but her maid is, as well as the absent lady’s friend, Roxy, who is now a suspect in the crime. Mostly because her name is Roxy.
Comin’ up: Mike heads out to a beach house to find the mysterious Catherine Trammell (Roxy sent him there). Verhoeven opens with an overhead shot of the winding San Fran roads by the ocean. He cuts to backseat views of the car ride on narrow streets and under tree cover. Our detectives are mere drones in search of the queen bee. When they finally get to the house, it’s so elaborate that they’re not sure how to even knock on the door, but they snoop around and, about five seconds later, find their woman sitting on a dock, staring at the ocean and thinking about some deep shit with a cigarette in hand. She’s Sharon Stone, looking A-list and giving a fine B-movie performance. Her every line is a verbal smoke ring blown in the direction of the detective’s questions. Our heroes get nowhere, but leave knowing that there’s more gold to be found in this mine.
After that: Our pal Mikey, his hair still in fine shape, goes back to the police station to meet his counselor. Seems he shot a few people on the job in the past and is a little traumatized over it. His counselor: a nubile Jeanne Trippelhorn, who looks like a porn star pretending to be a doctor. She’s got nothing but questions for him and his answers aren’t good. Also, they’ve slept with each other. And they still like each other. They want to get back together. But they can’t. It’s just too much for them both. Oh, the drama.
What the hell happens next? The cops get together to discuss the case. The comedy team is back. They lay out Catherine Trammel’s background. Wealthy heiress turned trashy crime novelist. She’s a regular Jackie Collins character—and very high on the list of suspects. That night, Mike reads Trammel’s bestseller and notices that there’s a murder on page 67 that’s EXACTLY like the real life murder. Holy fuck!
Where does this train take us from there? Another cop meeting, obviously. Except this time, there’s an expert in “the pathology of psychopathic behavior” at the table. He’s quite the excitable boy, never blinking, so intense he might bust a blood vessel and promising that this case involves a very special sort of psycho killer, the likes of which no one in this room of grizzled big city cops has ever seen.
All that from one dead asshole, an ice-pick and a page in a book. Whew.
If you don’t like this movie by then, give up. Turn it off and find a documentary on Netflix. You’ll miss the classic vulva reveal interrogation scene, but no matter. It was a scandal in 1992, but is pretty tame in the 21st century.
Trash fiends, however, DIG IN. This dumpster is good and deep. You’re gonna smell real bad after this one. As usual though, you won’t mind.